While the Shiva-Vishnu Temple’s various celebrations during the year are first and foremost spiritual experiences for its devotees, they are more than happy to share the good feelings.

“Carrying our inner peace into the day-to-day activities of the community, that’s something we can do and invite everyone to come,” said Prabha Duneja of Pleasanton, who helped organize the Janmashtami celebration that takes place tonight.

Janmashtami is a Hindu celebration of the birth of Krishna, the eighth incarnation of the god Vishnu. It is celebrated every August or September. This incarnation of Krishna represents the descent of Supreme-Self into the material world.

While this is a celebration of a touchstone event in Hinduism, the Livermore temple uses it, and other temple celebrations, to help attract visitors to the temple from every segment of the community.

“We are all citizens of the same empire, and we’re trying to (instill) peace and harmony in the community,” Duneja said.

During the past several years, the people of the Shiva-Vishnu Temple have made a concerted effort to bring non-Hindus into their ornate temple building, which stands out amid the tract houses of its Springtown-area neighborhood.

Geeta Jayanti, a celebration of the Bhagawad Geeta (perhaps the most well-known and respected text of Hinduism), is another annual celebration to which the public is invited.

The temple also sponsors a periodic health fair, open to the entire community, that provides free medical advice on a wide array of topics. There are also merit scholarships for graduating high school students.

“Our temple is not only for Hindu religious services; we are a multicultural service organization,” said Krishna Chander, this year’s temple board president.

While without “members” in the formal sense of the word, more than 20,000 Hindus from the East Bay and beyond worship at the Livermore temple. And at today’s Janmashtami, texts and other information about Hinduism will be available for those interested.

Duneja said temple officials are not averse to becoming home to even more Hindu worshippers. But that isn’t the point of inviting the surrounding community to come to the temple. In addition to various spiritual readings (including from the Bhagawad Geeta) and performances, visitors can partake in a free buffet dinner of various Indian curries and other delights.

The food has its spiritual component, Duneja said, just as does every aspect of the celebration.

“We cook all the food … and even that act carries with it a lot of positive energy,” she said.

Sam Richards has been a newspaper reporter/editor since 1982, when he got his first job as a weekend police reporter in Missoula, Mont. He later worked in Belgrade, Mont. and Tracy, Calif. before joining in 1992 what became the Bay Area News Group. He works out of Walnut Creek, covering a variety of stories, with a focus on City Hall news.

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